We are committed to protecting and improving the environment, so we need to be sure that all aspects of our business understand what is required of them and that we work together successfully to achieve our environmental goals. As well as our own environmental plans, we of course also have to make sure we comply with environmental laws and regulations and have the right measures in place to recognise and deal with all environmental risks.

The environmental management principles we apply across our business are developed from three sources: the Toyota Earth Charter, Environmental Policy and European Environmental Action Plan. These give us a framework that helps us continually improve our performance and progress towards our environmental goals. They also support the sharing of our experience and know-how with others, to increase environmental awareness and responsibility.

Our Environmental Action Plan sets out our environmental activities and goals for a five-year period.

As well as explaining what we will be doing in the short term, it also gives us a strategy for working towards our longer term goals. We produce a completely updated plan every five years, but its content is reviewed annually and revised where necessary. When we reach the end of each plan’s five-year span, we take the opportunity to look back on what we have achieved and identify areas where we need to improve or do more to reach our goals.

The latest Environmental Action Plan is the sixth we have produced. It was formulated in autumn 2015 and covers the period April 2016 – March 2020.

The plan we are working with today carries forward the three priority areas we established in the previous plan: how we can contribute to creating a low-carbon society, how we can achieve a recycling-based society, and how we can do more to protect the environment and build a society that lives and works in harmony with nature. Our principal strategy remains the delivery of sustainable mobility by developing new and better eco-cars.

The adoption of the plan coincided with the announcement of the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050, in which we declare bold environmental targets we aim to achieve by the middle of the century. Our efforts will be supported and strengthened by our current and future action plans.